The PHFI-UK Consortium is a capacity building initiative that aims to foster strong and enduring academic links between PHFI and the UK Consortium institutions improve the research and teaching skills of PHFI faculty.

The programme offers funding opportunities to PHFI faculty members to undertake masters and doctoral studies in the UK as well as offering funding for UK-India collaborative research projects, bilateral visits and delivery of short courses in India.

We also support institutional capacity building by offering funding for fact-finding visits to the UK for PHFI professional support staff – heads of finance, distance learning and library staff. The first 5-year phase of this innovative capacity building programme has focused on up-skilling PHFI faculty. In the coming years we expect the UK side will benefit more and more from the valuable links which have been established with India in all areas of public health, from NCDs to infectious disease and maternal and child health.

PHFI’s central goal is to address the shortfall of public health researchers and practitioners who can deliver a sustained and holistic response to India’s public health challenges. Building institutional capacity for research and training is the highest priority. The Wellcome Trust programme has been the locus of capacity enchancement for researach, training and policy at PHFI. The programme is made up of two parts. Phase 1, which began in 2008, and an Extension Phase which began in 2013.

Phase 1 (2008 – 2017)

This phase of the programme has enabled Masters, PhD studentships, Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships, Research Grants, Short Courses in India, and numerous faculty exchange visits. The focus of this is very much on individual career training, mainly for researchers. However In 2013 and 2014 we also held faculty training courses for teachers (Distance Learning, Quality Assurance in Teaching) and for non-academic leading management and finance systems at PHFI.

Extension (2013 – 2015)

An extension grant was awarded in 2013 to build on the earlier WT award by strengthening the research competency of returning and recently recruited PhDs and helping them become fully-fledged, independent researchers. We are doing this by:

Preparing new PhDs for careers in research through training in grant development, writing and management, writing for publication and for policy documents, presentation and communications skills, and research to policy connections and orientation to health systems.

We are selecting especially promising new PhDs for Career Development Fellowships that include supervision by UK and Indian faculty, protected research time, and seed funding for grant development and travel to UK.

We are also creating a multidisciplinary, enabling environment for high-quality research at PHFI by training mentors, building capacity for using existing datasets to support research, and training researchers in field research methods.